of the country, and then they call it Protection!—it is the protection of the vulture to the lamb."

The following is his celebrated delineation of filial affection, which is better known perhaps than any other part of this speech:

"When I see in many of these letters the infirmities of age made a subject of mockery and ridicule; when I see the feelings of a son treated by Mr. Middleton as puerile and contemptible; when I see an order given from Mr. Hastings to harden that son's heart, to choke the struggling nature in his bosom; when I see them pointing to the son's name and to his standard, while marching to oppress the mother, as to a banner that gives dignity, that gives a holy sanction and a reverence to their enterprise; when I see and hear these things done when I hear them brought into three deliberate Defences set up against the Charges of the Commons-my lords, I own I grow puzzled and confounded, and almost begin to doubt, whether, where such a defence can be offered, it may not be tolerated.

"And yet, my lords, how can I support the claim of filial love by argument-much less the affection of a son to a mother-where love loses its awe, and veneration is mixed with tenderness? What can I say upon such a subject? what can I do but repeat the ready truths which, with the quick impulse of the mind, must spring to the lips of every man on

such a theme? Filial Love! the morality of instinct, the sacrament of nature and duty-or rather let me say, it is miscalled a duty, for it flows from the heart without effort, and is its delight, its indulgence, its enjoyment. It is guided, not by the slow dictates of reason; it awaits not encouragement from reflection, or from thought; it asks no aid of memory; it is an innate, but active, consciousness of having been the object of a thousand tender solicitudes, a thousand waking watchful cares, of meek anxiety and patient sacrifices, unremarked and unrequited by the object. It is a gratitude founded upon a conviction of obligations, not remembered, but the more binding because not remembered because conferred before the tender reason could acknowledge, or the infant memory record, them—a gratitude and affection, which no circumstances should subdue, and which few can strengthen; a gratitude, in which even injury from the object, though it may blend regret, should never breed resentment; an affection which can be increased only by the decay of those to whom we owe it, and which is then most fervent when the tremulous voice of age, resistless in its feebleness, inquires for the natural protector of its cold decline.

"If these are the general sentiments of man, what must be their depravity, what must be their degeneracy, who can blot out and erase from the bosom the virtue that is

deepest rooted in the human heart, and twined within the cords of life itself-aliens from nature, apostates from humanity! And yet, if there is a crime more fell, more foulif there is anything worse than a wilful persecutor of his mother-it is to see a deliberate, reasoning instigator and abettor to the deed :— this it is that shocks, disgusts, and appals the mind more than the other-to view, not a wilful parricide, but a parricide by compulsion, a miserable wretch, not actuated by the stubborn evils of his own worthless heart, not driven by the fury of his own distracted brain, but lending his sacrilegious hand, without any malice of his own, to answer the abandoned purposes of the human fiends that have subdued his will! To condemn crimes like these, we need not talk of laws or of human rulestheir foulness, their deformity, does not depend upon local constitutions, upon human institutes or religious creeds:—they are crimes— and the persons who perpetrate them are monsters who violate the primitive condition, upon which the earth was given to man,—they are guilty by the general verdict of human kind."

The following is a good example of Sheridan's command of the language of crimination:

"It is this circumstance of deliberation and consciousness of his guilt-it is this that inflames the minds of those who watch his transactions, and roots out all pity for a per

son who could act under such an influence. We conceive of such tyrants as Caligula and Nero, bred up to tyranny and oppression, having had no equals to control them-no moment for reflection-we conceive that, if it could have been possible to seize the guilty profligates for a moment, you might bring conviction to their hearts and repentance to their minds. But when you see a cool, reasoning, deliberate tyrant-one who was not born and bred to arrogance, who has been nursed in a mercantile line-who has been used to look round among his fellow-subjects-to transact business with his equals to account for conduct to his master, and, by that wise system of the Company, to detail all his transactions-who never could fly one moment from himself, but must be obliged every night to sit down and hold up a glass to his own soul-who could never be blind to his deformity, and who must have brought his conscience not only to connive at but to approve of it-this it is that distinguishes it from the worst cruelties, the worst enormities of those who, born to tyranny, and finding no superior, no adviser, have gone to the last presumption that there were none above to control them hereafter. This is a circumstance that aggravates the whole of the guilt of the unfortunate gentleman we are now arraigning at your bar."

The peroration, a masterpiece of clever rhetoric and skillful pleading, is as follows:

"And now before I come to the last magnificent paragraph, let me call the attention of those who, possibly, think themselves capable of judging of the dignity and character of justice in this country; let me call the attention of those who, arrogantly perhaps, presume that they understand what the features, what the duties of justice are here and in India; let them learn a lesson from this great statesman, this enlarged, this liberal philosopher:-'I hope I shall not depart from the simplicity of official language in saying, that the majesty of Justice ought to be approached with solicitation, not descend to provoke or invite it, much less to debase itself by the suggestion of wrongs and the promise of redress, with the denunciation of punishment before trial, and even before accusation.'

"This is the exhortation which Mr. Hastings makes to his counsel. This is the character which he gives of British justice.

"But I will ask your lordships, do you approve this representation? Do you feel that this is the true image of Justice? Is this the character of British Justice? Are these her features? Is this her countenance? Is this her gait or her mien? No, I think even now I hear you calling upon me to turn from this vile libel, this base caricature, this Indian pagod, formed by the hand of guilty and knavish tyranny, to dupe the heart of ignorance, to turn from this deformed idol to the